Duel Booting Tutorial

For those who don't know, dual-booting is the act of having two operating systems installed simultaneously on your computer. To do this, you will need some tools:

1. any distro linux Live CD or any other OS Live CD you want (i will be talking about Ubuntu as example some other OS may vary in intsallation : all these links below will allow you to download the popular linux distros them (props to Chi_Kitory for giving me the links to the last three)

http://www.ubuntu.com/


http://www.kubuntu.org/



http://www.edubuntu.org/



http://www.xubuntu.org/

2. half a Brain

3. Recommended 10g free space required like 4g

4. Desire to run and learn linux!

Once you've downloaded the Linux iso, check the md5 if desired, then burn the iso to a disk. The iso is a file that tells the cd burner exactly what goes on the disk. Once that is done, you should defragment your hard drive. Some times when a drive is fragmented, you cant partition it because there are fragments in the area you are separating. This may take some time. Walk around, read a book, or just watch while this is in progress.

If Linux booted, congratulations, were 1/3 of the way there. If not, refer to your BIOS manual and see how to boot from cd. After linux boots, depending on the distro.. i am gonna use Ununtu there should be a menu with like 4 options. Click the second option that should say install (in this case) Ubuntu. if you just want to try it out first you can by choosing the first option it should say "try ubuntu without changing settings on your computer". by choosing the first option it will allow you to use linux untill you restart.



Ok now that you have selected install linux.. its is gonna start setting it up.. then it will ask you about partitioning your HDD(hard disk drive)..now i am going to throw out a serious caution.. if you only have one HDD then you need to be careful when you partition it becasue it reformats the section of the HDD and you could end up overwriting files you dont want to lose. i highly suggest if you have two HDD use the second one... and make sure it is empty. once you decide the Partition then it is pretty simple from there..



Now it should take a while to reformat the HDD and install ubuntu... after that is all done you will be required to restart the computer. before the computer boots up it will go into this GRUB program and it will allow you to choose your OS you wish to boot (i am not sure about the other OS.. once i try the others i will update this Tutorial).



there you go you now have your computer duel booting!



Note: Duel boot can get annoying if you constantly have to switch back and forth.. any files that you have on the other OS you will have to use a USB to tranfer back and forth... so you could do this if you decide duelbooting isnt for you...



Use a virtual Machine... they are.. programs that emulate an Operating system.. they are pretty nice.. i recommend Sun microsystems VirtualBox



heres the link https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP...-F@CDS-CDS_SMI



Hope you enjoy the Tutorial ^_^



Tell me how it works for you!
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"Artificial Intelligence usually beats natural stupidity."

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